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October, 2014

This month, I’m doing a challenge to work on my blog, I’m taking the Inheritance study by Beth Moore, and I’m working on being sure I write things frequently. It’s about establishing an identity. Today’s challenge was to rewrite our “about” page. You can find mine here. This morning, I remembered that indeed one of the chapters in my book speaks to identity. I want to share that with you today.

I am His Child

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.
I John 3:1

Identity is so important to us. It starts when we are very young. Children begin with identifying with their parents. As they grow into teenagers, they strike out on their own to try to establish their own identities. Even as adults, we still work on defining our identity.

In today’s modern world, we are all creating an identity, or even a brand, as we maneuver social media sites. Just take a minute and do a Google search for your name. That shows what your “identity” is in the world of social media and the Internet.

In all of that, even as we grow and try to become more independent, our identity always comes back to our base. We still desire to be connected to our original family.

In my own life, I was adopted by my father when I was 2 years old. I grew up hearing all of those special things that are said to kids who are adopted about how “special” that was. As a teenager, we became more estranged as I struggled to learn more about myself.

Flash forward to my early 40s. I learned in a painful discussion with a family member that my father had said, about a friend’s daughter, “Well, she’s not really his daughter, she’s adopted.” What a painful realization for me that he felt that way! Even in our estranged time, I had never anticipated that the identity of that relationship would cease to exist. Sadly, that relationship has remained forever broken and even to the point of impacting the relationship I had with my mother in the last year of her life. Those connections do matter to us, no matter what age we are.

I often found solace in my relationship with my grandmother. We were so close from the time I was a baby. It was not uncommon for her to slip and say “your dad” when she meant my grandfather. I found a great deal of comfort in the identity of family from her and it is something she taught me to value. When she died, it was a painful it loss of that identity yet again. Yes, I am still hers and she is still mine; however, she’s just not physically present any longer.

Then I see this verse. Our identity as children of God is one that doesn’t change. I am indeed someone’s child, a child of God. That changes everything. It provides a parental identity for my life, one that is nurturing, and provides guidance and unconditional love—one that is truly amazing, one that doesn’t depend on doing things perfectly, one that isn’t about where you started, but more about where you are today.

I love that we can each claim this identity. What a blessing in life to know each and every day that we are children of God!

What identity crises have you struggled with in your life? How does knowing that you are a child of God change how you deal with those things in life today?